Israel anti-boycott law an attack on freedom of expression

A law passed by the Israeli Knesset (parliament) making it an offence to call for a boycott against the state of Israel or its West Bank settlements will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression in Israel, Amnesty International said today.

The controversial law, passed on Monday night, makes it a civil offence to call for an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of people or institutions in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) for political reasons. Anyone making such calls could face a lawsuit and other financial penalties.

Sponsors of the bill, originally proposed in July 2010 by Knesset member and coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin, have made it clear that one of the main aims of the law is to penalize those using boycott calls to campaign against Israel's illegal settlements in the OPT or highlight the ongoing violations of Palestinian rights caused by the settlements.

"Despite proponents’ claims to the contrary, this law is a blatant attempt to stifle peaceful dissent and campaigning by attacking the right to freedom of expression, which all governments must uphold," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"The broad definition of boycott could apply to anyone seeking to use this non-violent means of dissent to criticize any individual or institution involved in human rights violations or violations of international law in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories."

Promoted and supported by the Netanyanhu government, the law was passed by 47 votes to 36, even though top legal advisers to the Knesset and Israel’s Attorney General said it was "borderline illegal". Several Israeli human rights NGOs have indicated that they plan to challenge the law in Israel’s High Court of Justice.

Parties filing lawsuits would not have to prove that a call to boycott has resulted in actual damages, as courts can order people or organizations calling for a boycott to pay compensation independently of the damages caused.

The law also allows the Minister of Finance to revoke the tax-exempt status of NGOs calling for a boycott, which threatens the funding on which many Israeli human rights NGOs rely. Companies or organizations participating in a boycott could also be disqualified from applying for government contracts.

This is only one of many laws recently passed or being considered by the Knesset which have been criticized by Israeli human rights NGOs for restricting freedom of expression, the work of Israeli civil society organizations, or the rights of Palestinian citizens and their political representatives.

Israel's policy of establishing settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and is considered a war crime, according to the statute of the International Criminal Court.

Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the Israeli authorities to end settlement construction as a first step towards completely removing unlawful Israeli settlements from the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Amnesty International has taken no position on boycotts anywhere in the world, but fears that this law will lead to violations of the right to freedom of expression of those calling for boycotts.

Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens

These laws threaten Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and others with yet more officially sanctioned discrimination. Israeli parliamentarians should be working hard to end glaring inequality, not pushing through discriminatory laws to control who can live where and to create a single government-approved view of Israel's history.

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch

March 30, 2011

(Jerusalem) - Two new Israeli laws affecting Israel's Palestinian Arab residents would promote discrimination and stifle free expression, Human Rights Watch said today. One would authorize rural, Jewish-majority communities to reject Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and other "unsuitable" applicants for residency, and the other would chill expression regarding a key moment in the history of Palestinian citizens, Human Rights Watch said.

"These laws threaten Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and others with yet more officially sanctioned discrimination," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Israeli parliamentarians should be working hard to end glaring inequality, not pushing through discriminatory laws to control who can live where and to create a single government-approved view of Israel's history."

The Knesset passed both laws on March 23, 2011. One officially authorizes "admissions committees" in about 300 Jewish-majority communities to reject applicants for residency who do not meet vague "social suitability" criteria. The measure anchors in law a practice that has been the basis for unjustly rejecting applications by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel as well as members of socially marginalized groups such as Jews of non-European ancestry and single-parent families. The second law would heavily fine any government-funded institution, including municipalities that provide health and education, for commemorating the "Nakba" - the Arabic term to describe the destruction of Palestinian villages and expulsion of their residents after Israel's declaration of independence - and for expression deemed to "negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state." The "admissions committee" law requires anyone seeking to move to any community in the Negev and Galilee regions with fewer than 400 families to obtain approval from committees consisting of town residents, a member of the Jewish Agency or World Zionist Organization, and several others. The law empowers these committees to reject candidates who, among other things, "are ill-suited to the community's way of life" or "might harm the community's fabric."

There are more than 300 such small communities in the Negev and Galilee, either small cooperative "kibbutzes" with some shared property, farming communities called "moshavs," or small rural "community towns," on land leased by the state. These communities already have admissions committees established under regulations of the Israel Land Authority, the state agency that leases them their land. But the committees and screening procedures had not been specifically authorized under national laws.

Although Palestinian Arabs are in the majority in the Negev and Galilee, the state has never allocated lands to allow these Israeli citizens to establish small communities there. All of the towns and communities to which the new law applies were established for and have a majority of Jewish residents.

Parliamentary statements indicate that the law's sponsors intended it to allow majority-Jewish communities to maintain their current demographic makeup by excluding Palestinian Arab citizens, an act of discrimination on the basis of their race, ethnicity, and national origin.

One of the law's sponsors, David Rotem of the Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, told the Knesset in December 2009 that such a law would allow towns to be "established by people who want to live with other Jews." In a radio interview that month, Rotem said the law would codify screening procedures so that Jewish Israelis could "establish a place where everybody is an army veteran, a Yeshiva alumni, or something of that sort."

Another sponsor, Yisrael Hasson of the Kadima party, said in December 2010 that "the bill reflects the Knesset's commitment to work to preserve the ability to realize the Zionist dream in practice in the state of Israel" through "population dispersal," which the government had begun "thirty years ago ... [with] a string of small communities in the Galilee and Negev."

"Realization of these goals obliged us as legislators to ensure the existence of a screening mechanism for applicants to these communities," he said.

Late in negotiations over the law, legislators added a clause that nominally forbids committees to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, gender, nationality, or disability. However, the law's exclusion criteria threaten to do exactly what is supposedly prohibited, allowing admissions committees to mask discrimination under the vague criteria that a candidate is "unsuitable" to the community's "social characteristics," Human Rights Watch said.

Israeli opponents of the law argued that it would effectively bolster the legal and political standing of admissions committees and allow them to bypass a previous Supreme Court ruling against discrimination in property rights. In the case that led to that ruling, a village rejected an Arab-Israeli couple because the village was established on land that Israel had leased to the Jewish Agency, which did not lease land to non-Jews. Most of the land in Israel is state-owned and leased for 49- or 98-year periods.

The couple petitioned the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2000 that allocating land to citizens solely on the basis of their religion constituted prohibited discrimination, including cases in which the state first leased land to third parties that would not then lease it to non-Jews. However, the court limited the ruling to the specific case and stated that it might not make the same ruling in unspecified "special circumstances." The village committee then rejected the couple because they "did not fit its character." After further legal action, the couple was able to lease the land in 2007.

The law states that each community's unique "characteristics" will be "codified," and that rejected candidates are entitled to an explanation. However, in a February 2011 Supreme Court hearing regarding two couples whom admission committees rejected, the petitioners argued that many small rural communities are not designed exclusively for particular social groups with unique ways of life, such as ultra-Orthodox religious communities. The chief justice stated that the town in question "does not have any unique characteristics," and called the screening process an "invasion of privacy." But the court has yet rule in this case.

In a petition to the Supreme Court against the new law that has yet to be ruled on, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a nongovernmental group, cited court cases brought by Palestinian Arabs and other families whom village acceptance committees rejected because they did not "socially fit." In one case, a kibbutz justified its rejection of an Arab-Israeli couple because its admissions criteria required residents to be eligible for membership in the World Zionist Organization and to have served in the Israeli army. Few Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel perform military service.

Another village committee requires applicants to embrace the values in the village's charter, including "Zionism" and "Jewish tradition." Other communities rejected Jews of North African and Middle Eastern descent and a disabled veteran. In these cases, the parties compromised or the court ordered the committees to re-evaluate the application, with the result that the courts have not explicitly ruled the committees' actions to be discriminatory.

In an affidavit submitted by the civil rights group, the former chairperson of one acceptance committee stated that the committee often rejected applicants on the basis of committee members' personal preferences, and that in most cases the evaluation process merely rubber stamps a decision to reject applicants.

As originally drafted, the law would have applied to communities across Israel, but after a compromise, the final law, which passed after 2 a.m. on March 23 by 35 to 20, applies only to the Negev and Galilee regions. Longstanding Israeli policy seeks to "Judaize the Galilee," and Israeli officials have promoted plans to encourage large-scale Jewish immigration to the Negev. In 2010, several rabbis in the Galilee, who are government officials, campaigned for Jewish Israelis not to rent apartments or sell land to Arab-Israelis; and the Knesset gave preliminary approval to a parliamentary inquiry into alleged purchases of Israeli land by "foreign governments" for the benefit of Arab-Israeli citizens. Arab citizens of Israel have sought to move into Jewish communities in part because of a lack of housing for Palestinian Arab citizens. While Israeli planning authorities have established hundreds of Jewish towns and villages, Israel has not allowed Arab citizens to establish any new towns since 1948, except for seven communities that the state planned for Bedouins from the Negev, whom the government urged to relocate from their traditional lands or forcibly evicted from them.

Since the 1990s state planning bodies have approved "expansions" for Jewish towns, rezoning adjacent agricultural lands for residential construction. An Israel Lands Authority administrative decision from 1993 granted local residents and their children "preferred access" to the newly expanded residential areas, and authorized the towns to create admissions committees to review outside applicants. By contrast, Human Rights Watch has documentedcases in which Israeli planning authorities consistently rejected the petitions of Arab-Israelis to rezone "agricultural" lands for residential purposes.

In 2007 the United Nations committee that oversees states' compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination recommended that Israel examine the role of admissions committees, "ensure that state land is allocated without discrimination, direct or indirect," and "assess the significance and impact of the 'social suitability' criterion in this regard." Under the convention, Israel is obliged to prohibit and eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race or ethnic or national origin, to freedom of movement and residence, and to housing.

"Countries should seek to end the segregation and negative treatment of minority communities, yet Israel is moving in the other direction," Whitson said. "A state that deliberately promotes the residential rights and privileges of one ethnic group while diminishing those of another is practicing illegal discrimination, pure and simple."

The Knesset passed, 37 to 25, the law that allows the government to penalize any state-funded institution that commemorates the "Nakba," the Arabic term meaning "catastrophe" and referring to the historic episode in which hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents of what is now Israel fled and hundreds of villages were destroyed during the conflict after Israel declared independence in 1948. The penalty could also be imposed on an institution that "denies the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state," an action the law does not define.

Palestinian Arab members of Israel's parliament, community leaders, and civil society groups have frequently stated their view that definitions of Israel as a "Jewish state" marginalize and exclude them.

The law, formally an amendment to the Budget Principles Law, enables the finance minister to cut government funding to such institutions by three times the amount that the institution spent on the "illegal" activities. The law does not distinguish cases in which institutions spent non-government funds on such activities. The finance minister would need the approval of other budgetary officials to cut the funds.

The law does not define "institution," but states that it applies to any state-funded entity. Entities at risk include not only municipalities, but also theaters and schools that stage plays or screen films about the Nakba or cultural organizations that hold "coexistence" activities for Jewish and Arab Israeli students to commemorate both Israel's independence day and the "Nakba" as a form of mutual learning.

"This effort to punish the peaceful expression of opinions by Israelis who receive state funding is an insult to Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and a threat to freedom of expression," Whitson said. "Since when does the Israeli government have the right to tell Israeli citizens what they're not entitled to say about history?"

The Nakba law's threefold financial penalty threatens to harm the rights of citizens - for example, by cutting federal funds that municipalities need to provide health, housing, education, and other services, Human Rights Watch said. For example, according to an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report on Israel, local governments are responsible for providing basic social services but receive 75 percent financing from the central government to procure those services. The predictable result of the law's severe penalties and the vagueness of the acts and institutions that could be penalized is that it will broadly chill freedom of expression by preventing various institutions from commemorating the Nakba at all, Human Rights Watch said. "The government is telling Arab-Israeli municipalities and other institutions that if they don't shut up about the Nakba and anything else that bureaucrats may deem anti-Israeli, they'll have to shut down programs and services for lack of funds," Whitson said. "Democracies shouldn't quash expression even if it's unpopular, and in this case, what's unpopular to some legislators is central to the historical narrative of a million and a half citizens."

ISRAELI APARTHEID LAWS

1. Identity and Citizenship

Law of Return (1950) Grants right of immigration to Jews born anywhere in the world. Amended in 1970 to extend this right to "a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew." A "Jew" is defined as "a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion."

Non-Jewish native-born Palestinians - most importantly those who fled during the Zionist massacres in 1947 and 1948 - are in most cases prevented from returning.

Nationality (/Citizenship) Law (1952) Confers automatic citizenship upon all who immigrate under the Law of Return. Non-Jews - including native-born Palestinians - must prove residency and pass other tests; citizenship is granted at the discretion of the Minister of the Interior.

Under the new interim policy for "family unification" passed by the Israeli Cabinet in 2002, and made part of the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law by the Knesset in 2003, a discriminatory system has been put in place preventing applications for residency or citizenship from Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens.

Population Registry Law (1965)Requires all residents of Israel to register their nationality - Jewish, Arab, Druze - with the Population Registry and to obtain an identity card carrying this information.

Identity Card (Possession and Presentation) Law (1982) Residents must carry identity cards at all times and present them to "senior police officers, to the heads of local authorities, or to police officers or soldiers on duty when requested to do so."

Amendment to Citizenship Law (2008) Citizenship may be revoked for “breach of trust or disloyalty to the state.” 2. Land

Absentee Property Law (1950)Classifies the personal property of Palestinians who fled during the Zionist terror campaign of 1947/48 as "absentee property" and places it within the power of the Custodian of Absentee Property. According to the law, even the property of Palestinians who are present within the newly created state of Israel, but are not physically present on their property ("internal refugees"), becomes "absentee property." This creates the category of "present absentees."

Land Acquisition (Validity of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953)Confiscates the land of more than 400 Palestinian villages; "validates" retroactively their use for military purposes and for Jewish settlements.

Development Authority (Transfer of Property Law) (1950)Transfers confiscated Palestinian villages and private property to the Development Authority, which is empowered to dispose of it in the interests of the State, giving priorty to the Jewish National Fund - a Zionist organization aimed at settling Jewish immigrants to Israel. Both the JNF and the Jewish Agency - organizations that act exclusively in the interest of Jews - take on the status of quasi-governmental organizations within the framework of the Development Authority Law./p>

World Zionist Organization (Jewish Agency (Status) Law (1952) Establishes the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency as organizations with governmental status in fulfilling Zionist objectives - the immigration and settlement of Jews in Palestine.

National Planning and Building Law (1965) Creates a system of discriminatory zoning that freezes existing Arab villages while providing for the expansion of Jewish settlements. The law also re-classifies a large number of Arab villages as "non-residential" creating the "unrecognized villages." These villages do not receive basic municipal services such as water and electricity; all buildings are threatened with demolition orders.

Land Acquisition in the Negev (Peace Treaty with Egypt) Law (1980) Seizes thousands of dunums of land from Bedouins for the purpose of expanding Jewish settlements.

Economic Efficiency Law (July 2009) Allows government to classify towns and villages as “National Priority Areas” (NPAs) and to allocate enormous state resources to NPAs. 533 Jewish towns and only 4 Arab villages are classified as NPAs.

Negev Development Authority Law (2010) Individual Jewish families are treated as individual settlements and provided basic services. On the other hand, 40 unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages are denied status leaving 90,000 people without basic services and currently facing demolition and displacement.

Admissions Committee Law (March 2011)Officially authorizes "admissions committees" in about 300 Jewish-majority communities in the Negev and Galilee regions (where Palestinian citizens are a majority) to reject applicants for residency who do not meet vague "social suitability" criteria. The measure anchors in law a practice that has been the basis for unjustly rejecting applications by Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel as well as members of socially marginalized groups such as Jews of non-European ancestry and single-parent families, and thus legitimizes racial segregation in places of residence.

3. Political Participation

Section 7A(1) of the Basic LawThe Knesset (1958), passed in 1985 Bars a list of candidates from participation in elections to the Knesset "if its aims or actions, expressly or by implication" deny "the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people."

The Law of Political Parties (1992) Bars the Registrar of Political Parties from registering a political party if it denies "the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic State."

In 2002 both Section 7A(1) of the Basic LawThe Knesset and the Law of Political Parties were amended further to bar those whose goals or actions, directly or indirectly, "support armed struggle of an enemy state or of a terror organization, against the State of Israel." These amendments were added expressly to curtail the political participation of Palestinian Arabs within Israel - such as Azmi Bishara - who have expressed solidarity with Palestinians resisting military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

Al-Nakba Law (March 2011) Would heavily fine any government-funded institution, including municipalities that provide health and education, for commemorating the "Nakba" - the Arabic term to describe the destruction of Palestinian villages and expulsion of their residents after Israel's declaration of independence - and for expression deemed to "negate the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."

Anti-Boycott Law (July 2011) Makes it a civil offence to call for an economic, cultural, or academic boycott of people or institutions in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) for political reasons. It allows “injured party” to sue initiator of boycott without having to provide evidence for damage incurred.

4. Judicial Practice: Equal Protection CasesThe Israeli courts - guided by the Supreme Court - have consistently decided that discrimination between Arabs and Jews is legitimate based on the founding principles of Israel as a state for the Jewish people; "nationality" is considered a legitimate basis for discrimination.

In the State of Israel vs. Ashgoyev (1988), an Israeli settler was convicted by the Tel Aviv District Court of shooting a Palestinian child. The judge sentenced him to a suspended jail term of six months and community service. When challenged by critics, the trial judge, Uri Shtruzman, said: "It is wrong to demand in the name of equality, equal bearing and equal sentences to two offenders who have different nationalities who break the laws of the State. The sentence that deters the one and his audience, does not deter the other and his community."

Defense (Emergency) Regulations[1]During the Arab revolt against British colonialism in Palestine from 1936-1939, the British government enacted a series "Defense Orders" and "Emergency Regulations" that imposed martial law upon the Arab population. These laws were consolidated in 1945 as the Defense (Emergency) Regulations and imposed upon the entire population, including Zionists who were then seeking full control of Palestine independently of their British sponsors. Yacob Shimshon Shapira--who would later become the Israeli Attorney General and Minister of Justice--said before a meeting of the Jewish Bar Association in Tel Aviv in 1946 to protest the regulations:

"The regime established in Palestine with the publication of the Emergency Regulations is quite unique for enlightened countries. Even Nazi Germany didn't have such laws, and acts such as those perpetrated at Maidanek actually ran against the letter of German law. It is true we are assured that the Regulations are aimed solely against offenders and not against the entire population, but it will be remembered that the Nazi governor of occupied Oslo, too, declared no harm would befall citizens who would just go about their business as usual.

No government is entitled to enact legislation of this kind..." [2]

Just as the Zionists had made no protest during the period when such laws were used only against Arabs - and in the interest of the official British policy of Zionist colonization - after the foundation of Israel in 1948, the Knesset passed a series of laws extending their applicability under the newly formed government, and thereby imposed martial law upon the entire Arab Palestinian population. The Defense (Emergency) Regulations gave military commanders full authority to imprison people without trial, to bar travel, to demolish homes, and to seize property. This last power played a significant role in further dispossessing Arab Palestinians of their land. Regulation 125 gives a Military Commander the power to declare any area or place to be a "closed area" and makes it a violation of the law for any person to enter or leave "without a permit in writing issued by or on behalf of the Military Commander."

"...from 1948 the Israeli authorities used this regulation to close villages, extensive tracts of arable land and towns for the purpose of expropriating them.

Every Arab village or town, whether inhabited or not, was declared to be a separate closed area. Arabs were not allowed to leave their village or town, even for the purpose of cultivating their lands or collecting their olives or fruits, unless they obtained a military permit to do so. Any Arab who contravened this order was brought before a Military Court and summarily tried. An atmosphere of fear, terror and oppression reigned in Arab areas. Every other night or so, military units combed villages and towns, collected Arabs from their homes and sent them in military trucks to the Lebanese border or the Jordanian armistice line and ordered them, under threat of being shot, to cross to the other side."[3]

Although military rule was partially lifted in 1966, after the 1967 invasion of the remainder of Palestine the entire system of military administration was once again used in full force in the newly occupied territories. Thus the power of military commanders to declare "closed areas" is now being used extensively in the building of the Apartheid wall and in the seizure of lands between the wall and the Green Line for use in rapid settlement expansion.

In addition, various parts of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations have remained in force within Green Line and are increasingly being invoked since the Palestinian uprising of 2000.

In 2002, for example, Minister of Interior Eli Yishai began invoking his power under Emergency Regulations (Foreign Travel) (1948) to prevent Arab political leaders from leaving the country. (Adalah's Report Recent Developments--The Rights of the Palestinian Minority in Israel, 2 October 2002).

The Emergency Powers (Detention) Law (1979) has been used to detain Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel without benefit of trial and without permitting contact with lawyers.

The Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance 1948 classifies as indictable for up to five years in prison an act which "sympathizes with a terrorist organization" and includes "flying a flag or displaying a symbol or slogan or by causing an anthem or slogan to be heard." After the Palestinian uprising of 2000, the state began using this ordinance to punish Arab Palestinian political leaders with Israeli Citizenship who have expressed support for the Palestinian resistance to the occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.

The Press Ordinance (1933) requires that all newspapers must gain a permit from the state in order to publish; article 19 gives the Minister of the Interior the power to stop publication. In conjunction with Article 94 of the Defense (Emergency) Regulations (1945) a regional supervisor has the power to determine "as he sees fit, and without providing any reasons" those newspapers which can be legally published. During the First and Second Intifadas these laws have been used to close Arabic language newspapers that express support for the uprisings.

These and other ordinances have been used to violate the basic human rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel in key areas such as freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and the protection against arbitrary detentions and seizures of property.

[1]Discussion based on "Israeli Land Seizure under Various Defense and Emergency Regulations," by Hanna Dib Nakkara, Journal of Palestine Studies, 1985

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